


Trial by Fire

by elleisforlovee



Series: (None Of It Will Be) Worth It [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Anti-canon, F/M, Gen, Gendrya - Freeform, I totally have it planned out it just depends on the feedback this one gets, Might make this a part of a larger story, Pre fix-it fic...if that's a thing?, Unlikely conversation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 22:03:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18821638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elleisforlovee/pseuds/elleisforlovee
Summary: An unlikely conversation between Sansa and Gendry after Arya leaves for King's Landing(Theoretically takes place between 8x04 and 8x05)





	Trial by Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what my dumbass is thinking writing these one-shots but clearly GOT has me feeling some sort of way. This could totally fit in the same universe as my previous fic "Maybe" but you don't have to read that one to follow this.

Winterfell was different now: empty, quiet, increasingly cold. Gendry didn’t know if he’d ever stop missing the sunlight or the feeling of the earth beneath his feet when he found a particularly soft patch of grass to lay down upon deep in a forest somewhere. He’d never had a home before, not truly, but he recognized that he favored some villages more than others. Winterfell in particular seemed to be much more welcoming a fortnight ago when the people inside the walls were familiar: not just Jon and Ser Davos but a certain brown-haired girl and her knowing smile. Winterfell could have been home; he would have made it home for her. Now he wondered if she was even alive. 

 

Sansa noticed it too, how unsettling the calm was and how the mere lack of company and the vast stretch of land beyond the castle’s walls were much more terrifying than she remembered them being as a little girl. She didn’t fear much anymore or rather she’d learned to put her strength in a higher power’s hands. She was Lady of Winterfell now and there was still so much that was beyond her control. Even now with the North back under her command she felt somewhat directionless. In everyone’s attempt to return to life as it was before the arrival of the Undead, servants and townspeople, those incapable of fighting for the queen (and those that chose not to because the queen was not  _ their  _ queen) filled every waking hour with a task. 

 

Sansa, being a Lady, was left to monitor. She held councils with her remaining team and even took to walking the streets of Winterfell, passing a smile when she was incapable of compensation of any other kind. If anything it gave her a lot of time to think, her mind dwelling back to innocent curiosities she’d harbored before the battle. But the Night King was dead now; Arya had killed him, and Sansa was still wondering, waiting as if merely speculating the happiness of others could substitute for her own. 

 

Sansa watched the newly appointed Lord of Storm’s End wipe his hands on his apron as his eyes darted about from workbench to workbench. Like the rest of them, he looked desperate for a task to complete. Unlike the rest of them, Sansa knew his need for work was a need for a distraction. The last time she’d seen him here her own sister had been standing watching him, the two inappropriately close, talking in a way that made every shared word seem like a joke only the other could understand. 

 

“Gendry, is it?” Sansa began stoically. She did not enter the smithy but stood on the precipice of the space and the courtyard, the ash and snow fighting for dominance there. 

 

He looked up and she cordially grinned but left her arms tucked tightly behind her back, her posture straight. “Or is it Lord Gendry now?”

 

Gendry forced out a gruff chuckle. He stepped out from behind his work station but still left a considerable amount of distance between himself and the Lady of the castle. “Hardly, m’lady.” 

 

“If the queen declares it then it shall be, no?”

 

Gendry looked away. “It shall.”

 

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Instead of South with the rest of them.” Gendry was silent, causing Sansa to nod. “You may speak. I have no dragons. My army is nearly gone. I did ask you a question…” There was the slightest tinge of humor in her words.

 

Gendry nodded too, clearly swallowing down a simmering anxiety. “Your brother asked that I stay until everyone else left. Then the Queen ordered me to stay until the men returned.”

 

“And you did not question her?”

 

“No, m’lady, I did not.” 

 

“But you wanted to.” Sansa’s voice trailed off as she took a step into the smithy. Gendry thought it was bizarre to see her without Lady Brienne or even Podrick. Sansa was also much taller than her sister and yet she existed with a similar air about her, once that made Gendry equally nervous though for far different reasons. 

 

“Aye. I woulda preferred it, yes.” 

 

“Because of my sister.” The moment stilled and Sansa smirked. “How do you know Arya?” 

 

“We...I really don’t, m’lady. She asked me to make her a weapon and I did—”

 

“Because you know her. And have known her,” Sansa persisted slowly. “For many years now, if I had to guess.”

 

“It’s complicated.”

 

“Matters of the heart usually are.”

 

Gendry furrowed his brow. “It’s not…I don’t think she…”

 

“Would it be though? If I told you it was  _ like that _ for her, would your answer change?” Gendry said nothing. “I don’t know what Arya thinks or feels and I won’t pretend to. Her and I have never had much in common...we always seemed to exist in different worlds. She came back and I didn’t recognize her. I don’t know what happened to her but I’ve seen the way you two talk...the way she looks at you. She trusts no one and yet she trusts you.”

 

“We…” Gendry swallowed - hard. “I’ve known her for awhile, yes.”

 

“How long?” Sansa’s voice fell an octave and all at once she sounded serious. She may have said that she had little in common with Arya but the youngest Stark girl had similar talents, this one equally chilling.

 

“We were practically children. It feels like it was a lifetime ago now...m’lady.”

 

“Does my brother know?”

 

“Which one?”

 

Sansa smirked at Gendry’s newfound bravery. “Jon. The one you’re closer to, of course.” 

 

“Oh, no. I don’t really think it’s necessary.”

 

“Well you’re a Lord now and Arya’s grown. Even if she weren’t I don’t think there’s a single person in the world that could stop her from doing what she wanted to do.” 

 

“I’m a Lord by title. I don’t really know if it’s what I want.”

 

“You and my sister have that in common...or didn’t you know that?”

 

“Know what, m’lady?”

 

“That Arya doesn’t think herself a Lady. She never has, and she likely never will. It’d break my mother and father’s heart if they knew, though I wonder if she’d think differently if they were alive.” 

 

“I don’t know if she would.” 

 

“Why don’t you wish to be a Lord? Isn’t that every man’s dream?”

 

“Not mine.” He then quickly corrected in a sputter: “I’m grateful but—”

 

“But  _ what is a Lord without his Lady? _ ”

 

Gendry paused. “With all due respect m’lady, maybe you should talk to Lady Arya—”

 

“Maybe I’ll never get the chance.” Sansa watched Gendry’s eyes dilate. The words were no easier for her to say than they were for him to hear. “Sometimes I think my sister has a death wish.” She paused. “And honestly, most days I don’t question it either.”

 

“Well...if you’ll excuse me, m’lady, I have—”

 

“I saw my sister and you the night of the battle, you know.”

 

Gendry’s face burned hot. “What?”

 

“Well actually I saw her leaving the grain stores and you following shortly thereafter. It was amusing. She did have that weapon you mentioned. But I also know she hadn’t been to her room all night. I know because I waited for her.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Sansa smirked. “I also know she was crying the other night. You don’t know anything about _ that _ , do you?”

 

Gendry looked up. He was concerned but there was something else there too — Curiosity? Hurt? Shock? “No, m’lady. I...no.” And he didn’t know anything about it and now he wished that were still true. 

 

“Do you love her, Gendry? My sister...Arya...who you barely know? The girl you couldn’t have possibly spent time with on the night before the Undead arrived? The girl you  _ didn’t _ make cry...”

 

“I...Lady Sansa, I—,” Gendry faltered. “I really didn’t make her cry. If she was crying, I didn’t...she didn’t even say goodbye. Things were...I told you it was complicated.”

 

“But you’re cleaning the smithy for her, I assume. And that’s why you’re so angry, because you wanted to go to King’s Landing so you could find her.”

 

“She doesn’t need me.”

 

“Arya doesn’t need anyone. She also doesn’t know what she needs. Or what she deserves, for that matter.”

 

Gendry allowed a nervous laugh to sneak past his lips. “I can’t tell if this is an interrogation or a blessing.”

 

Sansa grinned, pushing down the wide smile that threatened to tug at her pale cheeks. “It’s neither. I actually came over to deliver a note.” She handed over a piece of parchment, clearly wind torn but soft and warm from where Lady Sansa had it tucked beneath her furs. “It came only this morning.”

 

“Have you opened it?”

 

“No. Of course not. It wasn’t addressed to me.” Sansa shared one last smile with the blacksmith before turning around to walk away. Soon though she stopped, spinning back to him in a way that was graceful and unassuming. “It’s not from her.”

 

“Of course not,” he repeated.

 

Sansa went on, leaving the smithy and vanishing into another part of the courtyard. She was beautiful, as many men had said, but she looked nothing like her sister and her personality, in his opinion, paled in comparison. He imagined he’d spend the rest of his life this way, not just with unattainable women but with women that would soon throw themselves at him merely because he had a title: he’d never want them the way he wanted Arya. He wasn’t sure he could ever want anyone again and he feared the note in his hands would seal his fate, that being a life alone in Storm’s End. 

 

“Lady Sansa!” 

 

The redhead hadn’t made it that far - only to the nearby stone oven where already the morning’s rations faintly coated the frigid winter air. She looked up and walked toward Gendry, seemingly happy to do so. Gendry was too terrified, too frozen, to contemplate the ramifications of requesting the presence of nobility, especially the Lady of the castle at which he was a guest — the Lady of the North and above all else the sister of the girl he swore he loved.

 

“Yes, Gendry?”

 

“I can’t read,” he mumbled.

 

Sansa leaned in. “Pardon?”

 

“I can’t—”

 

It processed before Sansa could let him explain. “Oh. Here,” she offered, reaching out as if to ask for the same letter she’d previously held in her possession. Even wrapped in leather her hands looked dainty, but strong. Gingerly she opened the letter and began to read, her eyes scanning the paper effortlessly. 

 

“She’s alive,” she nearly whispered as she handed the letter back to him.

 

Gendry blinked, his brow furrowed and he attempted a steady exhale. “What? What does the rest of it say?”

 

“Much of the same. But that’s the important part, isn’t it?”

 

Sansa didn’t give Gendry time to respond. She didn’t need his response to know what he was thinking or even feeling in the moment. She could only assume that come morning the smithy would be empty and he’d be gone. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please review if you feel so inclined. I'm absolutely willing to continue this (I have it storyboarded already) if there's enough interest...


End file.
